rigid robe of civilization, nor forsake their wild, wooded Tiers for the tenements of town.
We came upon them as evil genii, and blasted them with the breath of our presence. We broke up their home circles. We arrested their laughing corrobory. We turned their song into weeping, and their mirth to sadness. Without being disciples of Rousseau, without the simple faith of the French voyager, who discovered a nymph of grace and beauty in the dark Ourâ Ourâ of the woods, and beheld primeval innocence in the gentle, patriarchal government of tribes, it may yet be believed that social virtues were developed beneath the gum-tree shade—that maternal joy sparkled in the eyes of the opossum-skin clad one, as she joined in the gambols of her picaninny boy—that honest friendship united hands and hearts of brother hunters—while soft glances, sweet smiles, and throbbing bosoms, told that love could dwell within clematis bowers, as well as in the woodbine shade.
The white man entered this peaceful scene. The hunter stayed his carolling among the hills, and stole stealthily upon his own green sod. The mother hushed the tongue of the prattling one, and checked within herself the bounding emotions, lest Echo tell the dreaded stranger. And silenced was the talk of love; for deeds of wrong to matron duty and to maiden troth had chilled the heart, and flashed the eye with hate and rage.
The story of their sufferings would be like that written by the benevolent padre, Las Casas, in his "Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies," which is thus described by the learned Prescott: "It is a tale of woe. Every line of the work may be said to be written in blood." And yet it may be truly declared that Government had cherished proper sentiments toward the poor Indians; even the historian observes: "The history of Spanish colonial legislation is the history of the impotent struggles of the Government in behalf of the Natives, against the avarice and cruelty of its subjects." In the case of our islanders, there was not the apology of avarice, as they had nothing to give; it was rather a demoniacal propensity to torture the defenceless, and an insatiable lust, that heeded not the most pitiable appeals, nor halted in the execution of the most diabolical acts of cruelty, to obtain its brutal gratification.
The writer has on several occasions heard men declare that
